Talk About Cool Stuff, Like Bears and Punching
by starskipper
Summary: When Lloyd is injured, it's up to the ninja to tell weird stories and drink soda and go off on really long tangents in a very roundabout way of making him feel better. It works, we think.


The Silent Serenade is _getting away_.

Their target, an underground information dealer, springs between walls through alleyways, scoring deep grooves where their metal claws grip into the stones. One robotic arm hangs at their side, mangled and whirring angrily. They're easy to follow, but they're fast. Pixal notifies the ninja that one of their escape holes is coming up on the right, on the roof of a tall building that belongs to an obscure insurance company.

"Don't let the Serenade into the tunnel", she warns them.

"Acknowledged," Zane responds, and motions upwards. The team breaks into two - Jay, Nya, and Cole spring forwards, ready to intercept and box the Serenade in, while Zane spreads a layer of frost across an errant railing and skids across it to gain speed. He snatches Lloyd's hand, tenses, and whips - the green ninja flies through the air and hits the roof running, bare feet behind the Serenade. Kai springs up behind him on a (snapped - sorry) clothesline, boosting himself with firepower.

Lloyd's cornered the Serenade by the time Kai lands, katana flashing as he duels the cyborg's energy sword. His face is screwed up in concentration, and Kai can see the Serenade starting to lose confidence. He runs, about to join the battle, when he falters - the Serenade is losing steam too quickly, letting Lloyd in close, this smells fishy- when they reach out with their twisted grinding sparking metal hand and it's deflected by a high swing and a metallic CLANG and a wire comes loose and a gear and a fragment start spinning and they reach out towards his exposed arm and clamp down _hard_. And they only leave enough time for a strangled-sounding cry of pain before their shoulder tenses and whirs and pistons outward and throws Lloyd across the roof gravel, trailing errant sparks and reddish flecks. He slams into the air conditioning unit with a shout, and nearly bites his tongue.

" _Lloyd!_ " Kai breaks chase and plants his feet into the ground, skidding in a wide arc to face him. The Silent Serenade leaps off the roof behind him, and Zane sprints past Kai after them, face grim.

"'M okay -" Lloyd starts, pushing himself up with one arm, before collapsing back down. His breath catches in his throat as he tries not to think about exactly what just happened to his arm, it's in a numb sort of searing pain already, and he can feel blood between his fingers.

Kai shakes off his hood and hastily wraps it around the injury. He hesitates, for a moment, when Lloyd's fingernails dig into his calf from where he's kneeling, the ninja's breath hot even through the fabric. "Don't worry about it. Okay? Don't worry about it. We -"

In the near distance, a flash of lightning snaps between two buildings, and someone laughs triumphantly. "Silent Serenade is down for the count!" Jay's voice crows.

"Get it? It's like, a music pun." he says through the comms.

"Come up with better music puns," Cole laughs.

"I'd like to see you do better."

Kai sighs in relief. "We're done. See? We did it. We're going home."

Lloyd just exhales shakily, trying to focus on that and that only. His vision is blurry, and he can't tell if it's because he's crying or if it's because he smeared any of his own sticky blood across his face when he was trying to get up.

Kai turns away and speaks into the comms. "Okay, great, good. Someone get me a way back home, pronto."

"What happened?"

"Lloyd's hurt. Do we have a helicopter or something? We need to get home."

Someone swears quietly, cut off halfway as they realize they're speaking on the comm channel.

"I gotcha, buddy." Cole's voice says through the earpiece, firmly. "Coming up. Kai, don't get mad, but I might have to take him back. They're asking for you."

" _What?_ " Kai hisses. "I-"

"I said don't get mad. I got this."

"Be safe," Zane's voice echoes. "We are coming home as soon as possible."

* * *

"Ow-"

"Sorry."

Cole untwists the bandage and gives it a couple more wraps around for good measure. It's already kind of dirty, but then again, so are his hands. Lloyd's blood isn't quite red, he learns, after seeing it still fresh. It's more of a reddish-purple, like the color of a shallow vein. It's a little unnerving, but there's a lot of unnerving things about Wu's family, and if he remembers correctly, Garmadon bleeds a deep purple. For whatever reason.

The medical tape sticks to his fingers, and it takes him a few tries, but he gets it. Cole steps back and looks at his handiwork: a gingerly held, but securely bandaged arm.

"Yeah, that's gonna scar, buddy."

"For… how long?"

"Iunno. Probably forever. Ones that deep don't go away so easily."

Lloyd sighs, and visibly deflates a little. Cole can see his eyes flicking around the floor, the gears whirring in his mind, turning possibility over missed opportunity in his head. His face is still a little flushed, and it makes him look almost embarrassed.

"That's alright, then. I prepared for that."

Cole shifts his stance to one side. "You're using your serious voice, my man."

"My what?"

"Your serious voice. You know, the one you use to give orders, or make plans, or talk to the commissioner with. You don't gotta, it's just me," Cole offers.

"I - I don't think that's a thing," Lloyd decides. "And even if it was, this is kind of serious, so I'm perfectly justified."

"I guess. Just want you to know that literally no one is comfortable with, like, almost getting their arm ripped off, so it's alright."

Lloyd makes a thoughtful noise. And another, quieter. "Yeah." Cole moves to put away the bandage. "I guess - I mean, I thought I would be better than that, I think. I saw it coming. It's my fault we almost lost them, because I overswung? And I've been doing that a lot lately. The fault thing. And I'm not that big a fan of. You know. So."

Cole nods through the stuttering half-confession (he kind of knows these things), and closes the drawer. "Yeah, good thing we don't have the time blades anymore, because I swear, we'd use them to undo and redo everything we did by mistake. And most of the time, that's not a good thing, despite how much it hurts," Cole hums. Lloyd nods, unconvinced.

"Hey, look on the bright side, man. We sorta match!" Cole says, cheerfully, lifting his own arm and pointing to a jagged discoloration near his wrist.

"Uh… sort of?"

"Got this one wrestling a bear. Not as cool as stopping a cyborg info-terrorist, but it's still pretty cool."

Lloyd stops mid-shirt-adjustment, processing. "...You never wrestled a bear."

Cole gasps as his hand flies to his chest, overdramatically indignant, only increasing his performance to fluttering his eyelashes when he sees the kid's mouth quirk up in a half-smile. "Would I ever lie to you? I've wrestled at least two bears."

Lloyd blinks at him incredulously. "When?"

"It was ehh…" Cole abandons the offended grandmother look, waving his hands in the air lazily to think. "It was right before the whole Tournament thing started. Like a few years ago? You remember how we all got jobs, sort of? I was in the woods half the time. Wrestled a bear."

"Did you win?"

"Of course I won! What!" Lloyd giggles. "Of course I won. Have faith in the _master of earth_ , little dude! I showed that bear who's boss."

"How come it was attacking?"

"Well, we accidentally came too close to a den. And we didn't realize it, so before we could reroute or relocate them, this cute little cub wanders out of the woods crying, so of course all of us go to see it, but then WHAM! This HUGE momma bear comes out of nowhere and BSHH," Cole slams his fist into his palm, "tackles Erin, one of my team members. So like, she starts pushing it off her, but she's got a chainsaw going, so I jump down and…" He weaves the story with zealous enthusiasm and plenty of imagery, watching Lloyd follow his movements in what could only be barely-concealed awe. He'd have thought the kid would be more jaded by now, after fighting like four world-ending monsters, but stories are stories, and they're super cool. Especially with sound effects.

"So it's coming at me, claws slashing around like crazy, and I keep dodging 'em, and I keep backin' up because I can't get a good hit in, and I'm not looking where I'm going, so I step right into a pile of discarded twigs and I trip."

"No!"

"Yeah, and I hit the ground, and this bear rears back a-"

"Whoa!"

"Woop!" Cole freezes, his hand about a centimeter away from Nya's nose. She's frozen in the doorway in an awkward-looking lean away from his animated storytelling, holding a nearly-empty bottle of antiseptic and a broken chrome piston.

"Sorry bout that. I was telling green bean the story about the bear I beat up a couple years ago."

"Wait, are you telling him you won?" Nya says, recovering and slipping under Cole's still-outstretched hand.

" _Yes_ ," he stresses. "I caught its claws with my arm and kicked it in the nose. And I won."

"Eeeeehhhhhhh well, don't let the truth get in the way of a good story. Anyways, I came back to tell you this is all we have left," she says, shaking the antiseptic. "We're gonna have to go buy more because someone put an empty one back in the cupboard. So no more death-defying heroism until at least tomorrow evening, 'kay?"

"Dang. Alright."

"We'll try our best," Lloyd adds.

Nya does an inquisitive double-take as he speaks, eyeing the spots of dark blood that were already trying to escape the confines of the bandage. "Whoa, dude. That's gonna hurt in the morning." She puts the piston into a pocket on the blacksmith's apron she's wearing, and places the plastic bottle down on the table.

Lloyd winces. "It hurts right now."

"I bet. Gonna leave a wicked scar."

Cole gives Nya a discreet nudge as Lloyd's features scrunch up further, and she gives his arm a confirming tap.

"Never had one before?"

"Huh?"

"A scar. Like a big one, anyways, not counting tiny ones from little accidents."

"Yeah… no, yeah. I was just being careless."

"Woof. Congrats dude."

"Wh - congrats?" Lloyd looks back and forth between Cole and Nya, as if this is some sort of big conspiracy between them.

"Yeah! It's something to brag about, like, 'oh this? I got this fighting the Silent Serenade, and my team took them down.' Like actually this time, 'cuz you have witnesses. Awesome."

"I," he looks actually embarrassed, for one. Still confused, for the other, but mostly embarrassed. "Yeah, I guess that's pretty cool. Wrestling a bear is pretty cool, too."

"Wanna know how I got my first one?" Nya asks.

Lloyd lifts his head and nods at the prospect of another story. Cole straightens from where he was cleaning off the table, vaguely interested.

Nya tugs her collar away from her neck, revealing a sawtooth scratch starting at her collarbone. "I pressed the wrong button on the Samurai X suit and launched a rotator blade straight at my own head. Baaaarely dodged it. And then when I went to fix the mechanism that can toss blades at the pilot, I did it again and nearly took off my arm. And since no one knew about the mech at that point, I had to sneak around literally everyone to get one band-aid and change my shirt without being seen. I'm tellin' ya, I hate to admit it," she switches voices, mimicking Dareth, expression and all, "but I'm a born ninja."

Lloyd snorts, and then covers his mouth with his free hand. Cole, however, can't conceal his laughter behind his hands, however hard he tries.

"Oh, go on, laugh! I had to wear sweaters in the summer and avoid Kai for two weeks. It's ridiculous, and kinda stupid, and you'll notice that the rotator blade doesn't launch anymore. Ask Pixal. But it's a funny story!" Nya punches Lloyd's shoulder gently. "We all got some. You should ask Jay about his eyebrow sometimes. Actually, I asked him and Zane to meet me down here with some soda or something, so you should ask Jay in like two minutes."

"Ask me about huh?"

Nya shuts her eyes and flourishes with one hand. "A ninja, and telepathic. Truly, amazing."

Actually, three people shuffle into the room. Jay trots over to stand by Nya, empty soda in hand, looking like he wants to ask again what they were talking about before he came in. Zane follows, carrying a six-pack of soda cans that's missing two of the actual cans. Kai is trying to wrestle a third can out from the plastic, but it refuses to budge, even as he wrenches the whole thing upside-down. Zane glances around the room, spots Lloyd, and pops a soda can out from the plastic casing, leaving Kai to the rest of them (with a slightly-offended noise fo surprise and renewed vigor). Zane pops the tab and sets a (frosty!) can of orange crush down next to Lloyd, who takes it gratefully.

"Oh, hey, all of you are here, sweet. I was just telling these two about how good I am at being sneaky literally all the time, and how you," she nudges Jay with her elbow, "managed to slice off half your eyebrow."

Jay nearly drops his soda. "Ha - hahaHAha Hm. Well. I'll be going then, nice to see you're okay Lloyd, I-"

"Oh _c'mooooooonnnnn_ it's not THAT bad."

As Nya pushes Jay to tell a story he very animatedly would rather not tell, no sir, well fine maybe if you insist but I have to be in the right frame of mind, give me a second, Kai slips past them and boosts himself onto the table next to Lloyd and starts picking apart a bandaid.

"Doin' okay now?"

Lloyd lowers the soda can, shaking it a bit for good measure. It's a little flat. "Yeah. Thanks for your headband, I can wash it."

"Don't worry about it, we'll just stick it in the washing machine. Even if it stains, it's mostly red anyways."

"Ew."

"Little bit." Kai grins. He sticks the bandaid on his elbow, which should probably have two bandaids on it, but he figures one can do the job. "What really was happening in here before we came down?"

"Cole told me about how he wrestled a bear. And Nya was talking about how she hurt herself fixing the Samurai X suit, and how she had to avoid you for a week."

"Wait, what? When was this? Nya," he interrupts her about to give Jay a noogie. "When did this happen?"

"What happen?"

"The story you just told Lloyd. When was that?"

"Like a year ago. Remember that one time I wore the same shirt three days in a row and you said I had gross eel sauce on my collar and I kicked your shin for no reason and I said it was because you were bugging me even though I hadn't seen you all day?"

"THAT was why? Man, you could have told me you hurt yourself!"

"No I couldn't have, you big dummy, you would have asked how!"

"You could have _lied_!"

"You callin' me a liar?" Nya switches noogie targets and shoves Jay straight into Zane, who catches him and spins him around.

"I have heard this story. Both sides, from Kai and from Pixal. It was not a well-kept secret." Zane adds, probably directed at either Kai or Lloyd, but his statement gets lost in a veritable sea of sibling bickering. Cole shrugs at him helplessly, and Zane moves to help him put the last of the supplies back in the drawers instead.

"HEY actually, I have a good idea, tell them about your eye. I had to come home to that! I had to find you in the middle of that one, I was like 10, dude!" Nya says, getting the upper hand and putting her brother in a headlock.

"Oh, you were a big baby then, it wasn't even my fault. And I was gonna go get help."

"Liar. Liar! Now who's the liar. Go on! I'll be your fact check."

"Alright," Kai growls through a lopsided grin, "IF you get offa me."

"Deal." Nya lets go and backs away, bowing like she's giving him the stage, settling next to Jay again. "Don't think I forgot," she whispers, "you're not getting out of make-Lloyd-feel-better-storytime."

"Drat," Jay mutters.

"ANYways," Kai says, loudly, brushing off his shirt. "Two of you have already heard this story, so no spoilers, or I'll toast you. So. I was like, 12, and we pretty much ran the blacksmith shop after around 4 on our own. Nya was good with money, ("I wasn't allowed near the fires yet," Nya interrupts briefly) and I could make basic repairs at that point. But one of these days, we had a ton of people come in, and so by the end of the day, we had so much to clean up that it took us way into the night to get everything. We were almost done, so Nya went across town for snacks and to lock up the cash for the day with uh, what's his name, Winston. He was nice, I guess, he was really just the guy who didn't trust us that much with money. Anyways, right after she leaves, this big sulky-looking guy, who I'm gonna call Guy, 'cuz I don't remember his name, saunters into the shop all confident and stuff. Pretty sure he had one too many drinks or something. And he's like 'yo kid' (Kai puts on a deeper voice for this), he's like 'yo kid gimme your money'."

"This guy tried to rob a twelve-year-old?" Cole asks.

"I mean, I get it, but that's a pretty messed-up plan," Jay adds.

"But you didn't have any," Lloyd says.

"Nope. So I'm like, uh, I can't do that, actually, we don't have any left, but instead of giving up, Guy pulls a huge scimitar off his back and starts threatening me. And I ain't about to let this guy just do that! If he's here, that means I gotta get rid of him before Nya comes back. So I let him back me up to the forges, and I fling a bunch of coals at him, which wasn't the best idea, because they weren't blazing hot anymore and that just made him mad and kinda dusty. But there was a sword there too. So I grab this unfinished shortsword and I start duelling this drunk guy. It's like a twelve-year-old against a very drunk man, and like, in a little hut full of steel and weapons and fire pits, it wasn't super pretty."

"We had to clean up. Again," Nya groans. "I think we even closed the shop the next day?"

"I don't remember."

"Yeah you don't."

"Cuz like, I almost got the upper hand about halfway through, but I ran up against a cinderblock and lost my balance, and while I'm blocking his sword, Guy grabbed a chakram off the wall and rammed it straight into my head."

Jay sucks air in through his teeth. "Yyiiikkessssss."

"Yeah. Uh, I actually don't remember what happened next either? But I didn't die."

"I do. I walked in on you two dueling it out and getting blood all over the table and ran to get Winston and Yamamoto, and they took care of it," Nya says, almost accusationally.

"Oh…"

"You nearly took Winston's head off."

"Yeah." Kai nods and smiles to himself, as if remembering something funny.

"Dude," Jay says, slightly jealous, "that's a way cooler story than Nya's making me tell."

Kai looks rather pleased with himself and gives a 'what can I say' shrug to the rest of the crew.

"I could let you tell two stories and give you all what happened to Kai's ear," Nya says coyly, resting her elbow on Jay's shoulder.

"HEY how about we don't do that, actually? Don't," Kai says, throwing a Look™ at Nya like it was a shuriken.

"Hahahaaaa. Alright, your turn, Sparky."

"Aw, man, now my whole mojo is thrown off. Now I'm way curious!"

"Nope."

Jay makes an exasperated noise, but clears his throat anyways. "Whatever it is, it better be as dumb as climbing a pile of junk at three in the morning because I was eight and wanted to be a rooster. Wake my parents up. And then falling off of said pile of junk because I tried standing on some plates on a chair on some pipes balanced on an old backhoe on the edge of the pile. I w-" he breaks off, giggling, "I wanted to be tall. That was the highest spot."

"You walked away from that with ONE scratch?" Cole gaped.

"One that stuck around! I'm lucky I didn't break more than my arms. Do you have any idea how hard it is to eat anything with big plastic things on your hands? Impossible! You'd think I'd learn after the first time."

"You don't ever learn," quips Kai.

"I don't ever learn! I cannot learn."

"You didn't even make it through high school, my dude."

"That's not fair, none of us did."

"Hey, we didn't have time!" Kai jabs.

"I finished high school you prick," Cole says, and pokes at Jay's arm from too far away to make it any more than a poke threat.

"You finished a semester."

"I… never went to middle school, much less high school," Zane admits, rubbing the back of his head.

"Neither did I," Lloyd says, and the two make an awkward shrug of solidarity at each other.

"You two don't count, you can just download math and you're supposed to be thirteen right now but you're the green ninja."

"Thirteen?" Nya's eyebrows furrow in surprised recognition.

"I don't think that's how that works," Lloyd says.

"It's gotta be sort of how that works. I didn't feel ten when I was ten for a few hours."

"Ask Mistake," Cole offers.

"Ask Mistake? I don't think she likes me. She literally has only been cordial at _best_ to the Garmadons. And Wu," Kai snorts.

"What's up with that?"

"Don't ask me," Lloyd shrugs, "She never tells me anything."

"That kinda runs in the… well, you're not related, nevermind. Are you?"

Lloyd thinks hard, at the ground. "I don't think so."

"I honestly would not be surprised," Kai says, frowning at his soda. It got warm in his hands.

"Me either. Our family is kinda convoluted."

"We're just a big ol' convoluted families club, we should have meetings."

"The meetings would just consist of watching reality TV shows to look at everyone else's weird family life."

Jay taps the edge of his chair rapidly with two fingers. "Wait a second. Hold on, wait a second. We went super off track there for a bit but I have a really important question we need to get back on track for. Zane, can nindroids get scars?"

"Uhm," Zane starts, giving Kai back his now-less-warm soda, "not in the traditional sense. I think… maybe the closest thing I can think of is welding marks, even though you can't see those cloaked." He lifts his arm, tapping his side gently. "Blades still do damage, and if I don't want to waste resources on a new plate, I'll ask Jay or Nya to do a spot weld. Or I'll do it myself, but that could be dangerous."

"That'd be kind of nice, I think, to be able to burn yourself back together," Jay muses.

"You can do that, too, but not painlessly."

"Aaacckkk nevermind-"

"I don't recommend it. Guess who tried his own firepower on his side once and regretted it immediately."

"You?"

"Me."

"Dude."

"You're gonna take your own arm off or something if you keep this up, Kai. We can't keep doing this."

"I would not recommend that, either," Zane cuts in.

"Taking your arm off?!"

"Yes. It is wildly uncomfortable if you are not used to it."

"When did THAT happen?"

"Multiple times, as I recall."

Lloyd shudders. "I'm glad the Silent Serenade only caught my wrist, then. Though I wouldn't say no to a robot arm."

"Dude, you would be SO op with a robot arm. Mr. Chosen One Green Ninja Oni Master Cyborg," Cole teases, grinning at Lloyd's subsequent grimace.

" _Please_ no, I literally would only have chosen to be one of those things."

"Would you rather be a full-on oni ninja master, or a full-on cyborg ninja master?"

"Cyborg," Zane quips.

"You don't count, you're already a cyborg ninja master."

"Technically cyborgs and androids are different."

"What? No they aren't," Kai says.

"They _are_ ," say Jay, Nya, and Zane in unison. Kai raises his hands in a whoa gesture. Seeing him not surrender the point, the four begin to debate the logistics of cyborgs and androids, and which one Zane technically was, and where the terms came from, and how obvious it is if you had just read any Starfarer comics, or if you paid attention to machinery instead of just weaponry.

Cole edges over to Lloyd, who is watching this unfold with the utmost amusement. "So?" he asks.

Lloyd draws his attention away from his bickering siblings. "So huh?"

"So, did we make you feel any better about your fancy new scar?"

Lloyd exhales in a half-laugh at the choice of wording. In a weird sort of way, everyone acting this casual and sharing goofy stories like it was some kind of show and tell… really did.

"Yeah," he hums. "I think so."

"Here to help," Cole says, and puts his arm around his little brother's shoulders, and watches the rest of the playful argument devolve into impressions and loud fake academic explanations.

 _(a/n thank you RandomDragon2.0 for the advice! No more unicode all over the doc)_

 _(now with more italics and better formatting! You'd think I would have learned to read over the fic once I've posted by now.)_


End file.
